MSI finally ships its MSI Wind U230 Athlon-powered netbooks

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Four months ago, MSI announced two interesting new Wind netbooks… then mysteriously went silent, leaving liliputing netbook enthusiasts baffled as to whether they would actually see the light of day. Now they have, and they still look great: MSI has finally shipped its AMD-powered Wind 12 U230 in two slightly different configurations.

So what’s the difference? The processors and hard drives, my friends. The U230-033 runs an AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 CPU and comes with a 250GB hard drive, while the U230-040 is driven by an Athlon X2 L335 CPU and a 320GB hard drive.

The big dilemma here is whether or not you’re willing to run the risk of an Athlon CPU in a netbook: they’re pretty excellent CPUs, granted, but not as power-efficient as Intel’s Atom chipset. If you’re willing to take the plunge, though, you can buy the U230-033 and U230-040 right now at New Egg for only $429.99 and $479.99, respectively.